“I considered it to be pretty innocuous and it was an electric vehicle,” Cesare said. “So, I felt it was pretty obvious what it was for.

“Maybe they thought I was trying to go after a nurse or something.”

The DMV gets 7,000 personalized plate applications each month, and about 700 of them get flagged as possibly offensive. A team of state workers then examines the letters and numbers for slang, slurs, swear words and connotations such as gangs, drugs, violence or sex. References to law enforcement are also banned.

U-T Watchdog obtained a batch of questionable plates denied — or approved — and is giving readers a chance to try out one of the oddest jobs in state government for themselves.

At UTSanDiego.com/bethedmv, readers can review hundreds of license plates flagged by the agency, consider the applicants’ explanations for the spellings and decide whether to accept them before seeing the actual DMV outcome.

There are challenges that come with a job reviewing license plates, though two reviewers interviewed for this story said it is quite fun. They did not want their full names used for fear of reprisal by rejected applicants.

“Oh yeah, it’s a very entertaining job,” said seven-year veteran plate reviewer Barbara. “You’re looking at these cards all day long trying to figure out what they are saying. A lot of people will be blatantly obvious with what they put. They know they’re going to get denied so they just put it down.”

“It’s very entertaining. It’s one of the more fun parts of my day,” said Trina, who has been reviewing plates as part of her job since 2008. “You learn more things than you want to learn about offensive seven-digit configurations.”

Personalized plate applicants pay between $49 and $98 to get their plates, and between $38 and $78 to renew them each year, depending on whether they choose the standard California plate or one supporting a range of programs.

Each plate can have seven letters or numbers, except for the plate supporting state childhood safety programs, which can have a hand, heart, star or plus sign character in the design.

The reviewers said people applying for a plate online or in a DMV office employ a wide range of tactics to get their offensive connotations approved. They said applicants will substitute letters with similar-looking numbers, use obscure slang, spell words backwards so they become offensive when seen from rearview mirrors, and even use swear words from foreign languages like Scottish, Yiddish and Russian.

“We use Google Translate,” Barbara said. “Sometimes you have to play with it. An obvious bad word in Russian will be spelled a little bit off to try and throw you.”

The reviewers said they also employ Urban Dictionary, a website providing definitions for recently submitted slang words such as blizzed and huck.

Applicants will sometimes justify their plate with the model of their car or a business name, even if the real intent is to just get something offensive on the road.

For instance, the applicant for a Kids plate (Hand)LMYJNK claimed to have a job as a parts dismantler. The DMV rejected it.

In other cases, applicants may have been pursuing a plate they didn’t know could be considered offensive.

The Kids plate LVN(hand)DED was explained as being “loving dad,” perhaps because LVN DAD had already been chosen. The DMV reviewer commented, “living dead, is this OK? Zombies creep me out. And dead is not dad.” A review team ended up accepting the plate.

The plate KLN KAR might be intended to say “clown car,” as the applicant listed, but the DMV determined that it can also mean “Killin’ car” and rejected it.

The psychotherapist who applied for SHRNK UP got rejected after a reviewer couldn’t understand “why a guy would want ‘shrink up’ on his plate.”

Plate reviewer Barbara said it is not unusual for an applicant to miss the double meaning of a plate.

“Recently we had someone who had a woody car,” Barbara said. “I was concerned with the way woody was used. If you have a ‘69 car you can have 69, but it’s also up to whether you are using it as a sexual reference.”

After an initial round of comments from reviewers, each plate goes to a review board, which finally decides to accept the plate or reject it and issue a refund. Though the DMV tries to weed out all the bad plates, they still occasionally get complaints about plates that were allowed on the road.

“When the complaints come in, we always review the configuration, pull the original meaning and look at the overall offensiveness of the configuration,” Trina said. “If it’s blatantly offensive, we may pull it right away. If it’s questionable, we may wait. It really depends on the configuration.”

As for Cesare, he eventually got approval for EV B LEAF, because he said he both believes in electric vehicles and his electric vehicle “be a Nissan Leaf.”

“People actually have that plate in other states,” Cesare said of his original application. “It’s real hard to find something unique for electric vehicles in California.”